You can set two different variables for each application within PA - you can set their UI (tablet or phone), and you can set their DPI; so if you want to maintain the tablet look, you can use that UI but mix it with a bigger DPI (e.g. 320, which IIRC is the standard for the phone now) so no issues occur. It's quite neat, but a huge pain if you have a lot of apps.
The only thing I didn't like was the some what delayed, laggy nature of the notification bar. I appreciated the popups, but I felt that the transitions could have been a bit smoother.